DEMOLITION
Directed by
Jean-Marc Vallée
Released in
2015
Starring
Jake Gyllenhaal as Davis Mitchell,
Naomi Watts as Karen Moreno,
Chris Cooper as Phil,
Judah Lewis as Chris,
Heather Lind as Julia,
C.J. Wilson as Carl and
Wass Stevens as Jimmy
From the director of
Dallas Buyers Club, one of my favorite films, comes a new Jake Gyllenhaal movie..... should be
amazing, right? Well, I liked it. I definitely didn't hate it. I was going to watch it a second time before reviewing it so I could really get a
grasp on the whole thing..... but I just wasn't feeling in the mood to watch it again. Soooooo.....
Dallas Buyers Club this isn't.
I think this may have been the
weirdest Jake Gyllenhaal movie I have ever seen. I am not forgetting
Donnie Darko,
Enemy,
Source Code,
Prisoners,
Zodiac,
Nightcrawler, or even
Bubble Boy. Damn... dude really likes to do strange movies, doesn't he? Maybe that's why I like him.
Accidental Love... that David O. Russell movie that David O. Russell abandoned. The one where Jessica Biel gets a nail in her head (thanks to a nail gun) and becomes hypersexual and falls in love with Jake Gyllenhaal
(sounds like my life story).
Yes. I think
Demolition is weirder than all of those other films. The fact that I think it's weirder than
Enemy is really something. Why is it so weird? It's weird in a stupid way. In the film, Jake plays an investment banker whose wife dies in a car accident (he was in the car with her). He returns to work immediately, acting like there isn't a problem. This bothers his boss, Chris Cooper, who happens to be his father-in-law. Chris Cooper and his wife are deeply upset and want to be there for Jake.... but Jake.... doesn't really care. Right away, I was
TOTALLY reminded me of Jake's movie,
Moonlight Mile, from back in 2002, which basically had THE EXACT SAME PLOT. Sort of. Except the parents of the deceased wife were played by Dustin Hoffman and Susan Sarandon. So I thought.... okay.... momentarily he's gonna meet up with Naomi Watts and it's gonna be
Moonlight Mile all over again. Obviously Jake Gyllenhaal has some kind of weird theme going on in his life where he enjoys acting in these movies where his wife dies. You know what? His wife dies in
Southpaw, too. This man's really into playing roles where his wife dies.
He LOVES having a dead wife! I bet that's why Jake Gyllenhaal is single. He's got some kind of
issue I think he works out through his roles where he always ends up with a dead wife. He doesn't want to be married.
Anyway, back to
Demolition -- which turns out to not be like
Moonlight Mile, afterall. So immediately after his wife dies, he's in the hospital.... and the vending machine there fails to spit out the Peanut M&M's or whatever it was Jake ordered from the vending machine. I can't blame the vending machine --
I wouldn't spit out for Jake Gyllenhaal, either. But anyway.... the vending machine doesn't spit, and this leads to Jake Gyllenhaal writing a letter to the vending machine company to complain. Except it's no ordinary letter -- and he's not really complaining. Instead, he vents about how his wife died -- he writes a couple of lengthy letters about his wife, her death, their marriage, all kinds of stuff. As luck would have it, the customer support lady at the vending machine company happens to be a
pot smoking Naomi Watts, and she takes to Jake Gyllenhaal's letters like a
fat middle aged woman reading
Fifty Shades of Grey.
Before you know it, they're sending letters back and forth, and playing a sort of
cat-and-mouse game where Jake is trying to track her down because apparently she lives close by. Eventually they do meet, but,
SURPRISE -- she lives with her angry boyfriend, who happens to be the owner of the vending machine company.
OH, and she's got a 15 year old gay son, too. But despite the close relationship he develops with the caring and understanding and
pot smoking Naomi Watts, they
DO NOT have sex with each other. They simply.... write letters.
I don't really wanna spoil much more..... what kept me
glued to this movie (besides Jake Gyllenhaal) was wondering how it was gonna end. It is
ALL OVER THE PLACE! And Jake even finds himself being stalked by a mysterious unknown driver in an old station wagon. It's creepy, that station wagon. Think
Michael Myers in the Smith's Grove Sanitarium car in
Halloween driving around Haddonfield if he was stalking Jake Gyllenhaal.
But you need to hear about why this movie is so weird -- besides what I've already told you if you found any of that weird. Let's just say there's a scene where Jake and Naomi Watts' gay son (who has pictures of
Divine and
James St. James in his bedroom -- so it looks like my room) .... anyway, they
DEMOLISH Jake Gyllenhaal's very modern, very nice house. They get a
bulldozer and everything. They destroy everything. It's very
Fight Club.
They go out
in the woods and the gay boy
SHOOTS Jake Gyllenhaal in the chest while Jake wears a
camouflage bulletproof vest (which is something that I would do, too, in the woods with Jake Gyllenhaal, but
not with a gun).
They do it for funzies. Anyway, later, at a
hardware store (I think it was?), the gay boy confesses to Jake that he might be gay, but he is
NOT SURE. I'm like --
BITCH -- you have Jake Gyllenhaal in front of you and you're
NOT SURE if you're
GAY? Who does that?!?! I mean, if Jake Gyllenhaal shook a
gay Magic 8-Ball and asked it,
"ARE YOU GAY?" the Magic 8-Ball is not going to give the
"OUTLOOK NOT SO CLEAR" answer from inside its little watery domicile. It's gonna say
"HELL YES!" every time and then its little round window is gonna open and it's gonna turn into a
Magic Gloryhole. "GIVE IT TO ME" it'll say.
So anyway,
Demolition is a weird movie, so it's only fitting that I write a weird review. There's scenes of Jake Gyllenhaal
dancing in the streets and acting crazy. Like Tobey Maguire in
Spider-Man 3. There are
weird old drug dealers who take care of old carnival rides, like a merry-go-round. There's lots of destruction. It's all about demolishing your life. Changing your life and starting over and being yourself. That's basically the whole message of the movie.
I must say, though -- the ending was sort of a letdown. And yet at the same time, sort of not. Naomi Watts kind of
disappears, I feel. I wasn't too satisfied about how the whole Naomi Watts relationship turned out. It's almost as if he forgets about the friendship with Naomi Watts and just starts becoming a better friend with the 15 year old gay boy. Which I'm sure would be a dream come true to any gay boy --
becoming friends with Jake Gyllenhaal. Yet for some reason, when he's around Jake, he is not even sure if he is actually gay. I don't understand. That was the same age I was when I came out.
Where the Hell was my Jake Gyllenhaal then?!
So yeah.... I thought it was a kind of weird movie. Not a very good movie.... like, I liked it because I could connect to some things about it. But in general, I don't think this would appeal to a lot of people. Maybe. I saw online that a bunch of people who saw it didn't like it. I can totally understand that.
You can definitely tell it was directed by the director of
Dallas Buyers Club. He has a certain style to his movies. He
LOVES explaining something by showing all these quick, soundless flashbacks of the past. They get on my
nerves. I didn't really like that in
Dallas Buyers Club, either. I need
SLOW. Snappy editing makes it hard for me to pay attention and understand something.
But yeah, this was no
Dallas Buyers Club. Actually, for the first half hour of this movie.... I really thought I wasn't going to like it at all. In fact, I was even starting to think to myself.... alright, Jake Gyllenhaal, you're starting to
piss me off here. If these kinds of stupid roles are what you're going to keep doing, I don't know how much more of you I'm gonna wanna take.
FOR REAL. Because there was something about this character at first -- and even throughout -- that just..... tried to be
"cute." Cute in a weird, quirky, obnoxious, cruel way that.... if some other actor had played it, I wouldn't have had the tolerance for it.
I really hope that Jake Gyllenhaal starts taking parts in bigger movies. This indie thing he's sort of got going these days (
Demolition only made $1 million dollars at the box office, and
I CAN'T even find this movie for sale in stores -- I rented it to watch it) .... anyway, this indie thing he's got going on these days.... if they keep being movies like
Demolition, I'm going to get tired of him.....
Demolition is a good movie, but for me, it's sort of a
scary sign for Jake Gyllenhaal. It was good, but it wasn't
THAT good. He needs to do something bigger. I'd like to see him become an
Oscar winner someday. He needs to stop being so quirky and start being more serious. Otherwise, he's going to disappear.
I am including a picture of a nude Jake Gyllenhaal while he sits on a
toilet from the movie
Demolition, which I took with my phone. You're welcome.